This report presents findings of a process evaluation of Cape Light Compact's Creating Awareness for Power Efficiency Initiative, which included in-depth interviews with 27 customers of varying participation levels. It also includes the results of an impact evaluation using econometric analysis to estimate savings.

Residential behavior-based (BB) programs use strategies grounded in the behavioral and social sciences to influence household energy use. These programs have unique evaluation challenges and usually require different evaluation methods than those currently employed for most other types of efficiency programs. This webcast provides an introduction to documenting the energy savings associated with BB programs and examples of how different jurisdictions are addressing BB program evaluation.

This report includes evaluation analysis and findings from the Eversource New Hampshire Home Energy Report pilot program.

Focus on Energy created these co-branding and logo requirements that trade allies, or participating contractors, must adhere to when creating marketing materials related to the program.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on obtaining and using energy efficiency data through tools like the Green Button, smart connected thermostat pilots, and operational ratings of homes to evaluate and/or enhance programs.

This document provides guidance on how policymakers, utilities, and regulators should approach whole-building data access to maintain the confidentiality of utility customers.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on messaging strategies to capture the benefits of home upgrades and attract new customers to home performance.

This presentation covers Home Energy Reports (HER), a behavior change strategy, and conducting multilevel modeling to garner insights into which consumers drive energy savings.

This report presents the results of the evaluation of National Grid Rhode Island's 2014 EnergyWise program. EnergyWise is designed to achieve energy savings in single family (1-4 unit) residential homes by directly installing efficient lightbulbs and water heating measures, providing devices for homeowner use, and offering building shell retrofit rebates.

A recent cost vs. value report compared the average cost for popular remodeling projects with the value those projects retain at resale value in 100 different U.S. markets. This Home Energy article discusses how one of the most valuable remodeling options is one you can’t see--energy efficiency.

Take you on a tour of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center content and functionality and explore how you can use the Solution Center to help design, implement, and evaluate residential energy efficiency programs. Program examples focus on contractor engagement and workforce development. Learn how to support and partner with the workforce who will deliver your program’s energy efficiency services by understanding their capacity, recruiting contractor partners, enabling technical training and business development support, and refining program processes over time.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Autumn 2016.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Fall 2015.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held in Winter 2016.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buidlings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Spring 2016.

Energy burden is the percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. In this report, ACEEE, along with the Energy Efficiency for All coalition, measures the energy burden of households in 48 of the largest American cities. The report finds that low-income, African-American, Latino, low-income multifamily, and renter households all spend a greater proportion of their income on utilities than the average family. The report also identifies energy efficiency as an underutilized strategy that can help reduce high energy burdens by as much as 30%. Given this potential, the report goes on to describe policies and programs to ramp up energy efficiency investments in low-income and underserved communities.

This presentation covers the strategies, objectives and metrics for Energy Upgrade California.

This report provides the electric and natural gas impacts from the suite of National Grid Multifamily Retrofit Programs as determined through a billing analysis.

National Housing & Rehabilitation Association has collected a number of energy efficiency factsheets and resources on their Preservation Through Energy Efficiency Initiative Library.

This report for the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Board documents the difficulties that evaluators and programs in Connecticut faced in conducting evaluation studies and makes recommendations for improving data quality and consistency.

This report, informed by leading research and real-world examples, highlights practical online and in-person tactics that contractors can use to promote social interaction and social comparison among homeowners to make energy upgrades a "must-have" in U.S. homes.

This presentation discusses the energy efficiency reporting tool for public power utilities. The tool is an Excel-based template is designed to produce consistent, useful metrics on program investments and performance for small to medium-sized administrators of public power efficiency programs.

This presentation discusses process management improvements that Arizona Public Service made to streamline their program and advance home energy upgrades.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to assess, reassess, and initiate organization partnerships.

The multifamily sector can be hard to reach when it comes to energy efficiency programs. Besides being diverse and complex, the sector presents a unique set of challenges to efficiency investments. The result is that multifamily customers are often underserved by energy efficiency programs. Drawing on data requests and interviews with program administrators, this report summarizes the challenges to program participation and identifies best practices that programs can use to reach and retain large numbers of multifamily participants.

This presentation discusses how Energy Upgrade California streamlined its program through improvements in its HPXML and IT software.

This report looks into residential lighting savings assumptions found in Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs) throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions to understand what values were being used for key metrics such as hours of use, delta watt, and measure life.  It provides the opportunity to view completed Standardized Methods Forms to compare evaluation methodology and results.

This podcast episode explores sustainability and the unexpected benefits of energy efficiency with guest Jonathan Cohen, U.S. Department of Energy.

Better Buildings Energy Data Accelerator (BBEDA) partners Salt Lake City, the investor-owned electric utility Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), and the investor-owned natural gas utility Questar worked with community stakeholders throughout 2014 and 2015 to design and implement a data access solution. As a result, RMP created a data access portal for its customers in 2016, and Questar is working toward a data access solution that will be operational by 2017.

Energy efficiency is good for you--and for the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the community in which you live. This fact sheet shows how saving energy reduces air and water pollution and conserves natural resources, which in turn creates a healthier living environment for people everywhere. It includes the stories of a family in Pennsylvania and a hospital in Florida.

The key challenge with quantifying savings from end-use efficiency activities is the identification of an accurate baseline from which to determine the savings. Regardless of the protocol or procedure applied, all savings values are determined by estimating likely energy use in the absence of the program or project (the “counterfactual” scenario, or baseline). This webcast provides an introduction to considerations and common practices for defining baselines, the relationship between baselines and savings attribution, and examples of how different jurisdictions are addressing market baseline studies, setting baselines for retrofit measures, and market transformation program baselines.

Capturing the story behind energy savings projects helps catapult a culture around planning future projects, funding them, and growing a team's value in your company or organization. This webcast features media experts giving tips on telling your tale.

This report explains the psychology of individual energy efficiency actions, and how large scale behavior change programs can use this research to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This resource, provided by DOE, presents energy market information to help state and local governments plan and implement clean energy projects. The resource also includes a local energy toolbox that provides a cataloged, customizable list of actions to help local communities make strategic energy decisions.

This report summarizes the impact analyses of National Grid's and Eversource Energy's Home Energy Report (HER) programs. The evaluation team conducted three distinct impact analyses related to these HER programs: Cohort-Specific Impact Analysis; Mapping Analysis; and Dual Treatment Analysis.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on consumer engagement through the use of interactive media, such as connected thermostats and other devices.

Building on the strategy of creating a sustainable workplace, many companies have been focusing their efforts on developing a sustainable workforce. This approach to combining sustainability initiatives and employee engagement creates a value chain that has positive impacts for employers and employees alike and the communities they live in.

Applying well documented stipulated (deemed) values is a common practice for determining the savings from energy efficiency projects and programs and the databases where such deemed values are cataloged are called Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs). This webcast introduces the use of deemed savings, information on setting up and updating TRMs, lessons learned, and resources for state officials. As examples, speakers discuss the content and development processes used for the Northwest regional TRM and the Iowa state TRM.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on developing messaging and branding strategies.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on employer assisted initiatives and the range of models used to help employees become energy efficient at home. It included lessons learned from the Clinton Climate Initiative, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation's (VEIC) employee sustainability benefit program, and the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on changes and trends in the market for home energy upgrades.

This Guide is designed to help state and local policymakers to take full advantage of new policy developments by providing them with a comprehensive set of tools to support launching or accelerating residential energy efficiency programs. The Guide focuses on four categories of policies that have proven particularly effective in providing a framework within which residential energy efficiency programs can thrive: incentives and financing, making the value of energy efficiency visible in the real estate market, data access and standardization, and supporting utility system procurement of energy efficiency.

This report presents an analysis of data for residential single-family projects reported by 37 organizations that were awarded federal financial assistance (cooperative agreements or grants) by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program. The report characterizes the energy-efficiency measures installed for single-family residential projects and analyzes energy savings and savings prediction accuracy for measures installed in a subset of those projects.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to differentiate energy efficiency customers for targeted marketing campaigns.

This handbook provides both a strategic planning framework and standard methodologies to determine the energy and non-energy benefits of benchmarking and transparency (B&T) policies and programs that have recently begun to proliferate in jurisdictions across the United States. The intent of this handbook is to provide a simple “how-to-guide” with very clear steps and data requirements for the primary analysis methods recommended for use by local jurisdictions wishing or needing to assess the impacts of their B&T policies.

The Evaluation & Data Collection Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating your data collection and evaluation activities.

The Marketing & Outreach Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating your marketing and outreach activities.

The Better Building Residential Program Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating a successful residential energy efficiency program. The template includes sections for all six program components (i.e., Market Position & Business Model, Program Design & Customer Experience, Evaluation & Data Collection, Marketing & Outreach, Financing, and Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development).

The Better Building Residential Program Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating a successful residential energy efficiency program. The template includes sections for all six program components (i.e., Market Position & Business Model, Program Design & Customer Experience, Evaluation & Data Collection, Marketing & Outreach, Financing, and Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development).

This handout summarizes the key lessons learned regarding marketing and outreach contained in the Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center.

Volume 1 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013.

Volume 2 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report comprises a measurement and verification process, as well as billing regression analysis on projects with sufficient utility bill data, to determine gross verified savings.

Volume 3 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report statistically identifies factors associated with successful residential energy upgrade programs using a survey sampling, cluster analysis, and multivariate regression approach.

Volume 4 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report assesses the degree to which the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program met its process goals and objectives to identify the most effective program design and implementation approaches.

Volume 5 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013.

Volume 6 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013. This volume includes case studies that describe successful strategies that programs used during the evaluation period.

The Better Buildings Residential Network Designing Incentives Toolkit can help residential energy efficiency programs design incentives that motivate potential customers to act by lowering the risk, decreasing the cost, or offering additional benefits with home energy upgrades. This toolkit provides easy access to various case studies, presentations, and tips related to incentive design.

This document summarizes top marketing and outreach takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during spring 2015 Peer Exchange Calls.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on an overview of the Better Buildings Residential Network.

The Better Buildings Residential Network Social Media toolkit can be used to help residential energy efficiency programs learn to engage potential customers through social media. Social media can build brand awareness concerning home energy upgrades and the entities working on them, which can lead to more energy upgrade projects taking place in the long run. This toolkit will help program managers and their staff with decisions like what social media works best for various program needs. When aligned with other marketing and outreach efforts, social media can be a useful tool in attracting home energy upgrade customers. Note that social media changes constantly, so users of this toolkit need to regularly reassess their methods and review results to ensure goals are being met.

This presentation describes the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program evaluation findings, including goal and objective attainment, energy and CO2e impacts, program implementation lessons learned, market effects findings, and recommendations.

The goal of the Building Science Translator is to begin this process by providing a new glossary of ‘Power Words’ that can be used across the industry to consistently reinforce the value of high-performance homes. This includes applying this new language consistently to all consumer-facing materials used by government programs and industry alike.

This webcast covers DOE's new white paper, Capturing Energy Efficiency in Residential Real Estate Transactions, which highlights how residential energy efficiency programs can help make homes' energy efficiency visible to appraisers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, homebuyers and sellers. The webcast provides examples of programs around the U.S. that are successfully engaging the real estate community and overcoming barriers to valuing energy efficiency in the home resale process.

Real estate professionals are increasingly aware that today’s homebuyers consider heating and cooling costs, efficient appliances, and efficient lighting to be important factors in home purchase decisions. Residential energy efficiency and real estate stakeholders, however, agree that the home resale process frequently fails to account for the value of high-performance home features. If investments in energy efficiency were more accurately reflected in home resale prices, homeowners could have greater confidence that these investments would be recouped at resale, and they might make more investments in efficiency.

This case study focuses on how the Community Home Energy Retrofit Project engaged the community in home energy upgrades.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on community-based outreach and organizing strategies to market home energy assessments and upgrades.

This technical reference manual provides detailed, comprehensive documentation of resource and non-resource savings corresponding to the Energy Efficiency Fund program and individual Conservation and Load Management (C&LM) program technologies.

This report shares the results of a research study conducted to understand the awareness and perceptions of potential consumers regarding ductless heat pumps and heat pump water heaters. The results were intended to help the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance improve messaging and marketing themes related to these products across the northwest region.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on evaluation, measurement, and verification of predicted/modeled savings from home energy upgrades.

This series of 19 tip sheets is based on the experience and expertise of EPA’s Climate Showcase Communities. The tip sheets cover a wide range of topics, such as marketing and communications (effective messaging, traditional media strategies, community-based social marketing, and testimonial videos) and working with specific types of stakeholders (institutional partners, contractors, experts, utilities, early adopters, volunteers).

This tip sheet was inspired by the experiences and expertise of EPA’s Climate Showcase Communities (CSCs). It focuses on community-based social marketing and highlights best practices and helpful resources and recommended resources for other communities interested in pursuing similar projects.

This tip sheet from EPA's Climate Showcase Communities provides lessons from programs about strategies for effective messaging as well as recommended resources.

This tip sheet was inspired by the experiences and expertise of EPA’s Climate Showcase Communities (CSCs). It focuses on traditional media strategies and highlights best practices and helpful resources and recommended resources for other communities interested in pursuing similar projects.

This Multifamily Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs) provide documentation for the Trust's calculation of energy and demand savings from energy efficiency measures.

This webinar covers an Evaluation, Measurement, and Verification (EM&V) 2.0 topic about savings measurement software that provides results in real time.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches to generate demand for energy efficiency upgrades at multifamily buildings.

This guide provides recommended benchmarking metrics for measuring residential program performance.

This presentation focused on the Guide for Benchmarking Residential Program Progress with Examples and its step-by-step guidance for setting up an effective benchmarking process.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits and challenges of local programs connecting to national campaigns.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on standardization of effective practices across a program territory.

Information and communications technologies (ICT) can automate and transform the evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) of energy efficiency programs. ICT enables the remote monitoring and sophisticated analysis of energy usage, increasing the speed and scale of many EM&V activities. This report reviews traditional EM&V practices, explores new enabling technologies including the Internet of Things and remote building analysis, and describes the application of ICT to each stage of the EM&V process. The report then projects ways forward through a number of challenges (e.g., data overload) and concludes that ICT-enabled EM&V could eventually change the design of efficiency programs and the responsibilities of program administrators, implementers, and evaluators.

Home Performance with ENERGY STAR’s new HPXML Implementation Guide helps energy efficiency program administrators and software developers overcome fragmented data exchange by integrating HPXML (home performance extensible markup language) into their operations and products. HPXML is a set of common definitions for the attributes of home systems based on Building Performance Institute data standards and the computing language that facilitates the quick and easy transfer of home-related data between different markets.

This is a recording of a webinar from August 2015. Home Performance with ENERGY STAR hosted a panel on HPXML; the value it can bring to businesses and implementation methods. Interested organizations can use this resource to learn more about HPXML and its potential benefits.

Because of its potential to reduce customers’ first costs and leverage private funds, financing has been increasing in importance as a strategy for facilitating energy upgrades as program administrators seek to meet ambitious goals in a shifting energy efficiency landscape. This paper evaluates the experience of BBNP grantees to identify how programs can most effectively integrate loan offerings into their broader efforts to promote energy efficiency upgrades. The paper also identifies best practices from grantees’ experience related to integrating financing into program outreach and trade ally interactions.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches to incorporate weather data into energy savings calculations.

The Consortium for Energy Efficiency has collected information from its membership for each of the past four years on the behavior-based programs currently underway and how these programs are being evaluated. This presentation describes the annual data collection effort and highlight the key findings of this research to date. Results discussed will consider the social science knowledge most commonly incorporated into the programs captured, as well as methods used for program evaluation and overarching lessons learned from the program administrator community.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on marketing energy efficiency with season-specific marketing strategies and messages.

This publication draws on recent focus groups, polls, and other research to chart a path promoting energy efficiency through language and imagery in ways that tap public enthusiasm.

The Recovery Act Evaluation was performed to provide information on the costs and benefits of WAP services in different parts of the country and for different types of housing. It was also performed to provide a comprehensive picture of the Program (including the characteristics of the clients, housing stock, and service providers), assess program administration, document experiences during the Recovery Act period, and conduct several special studies.

The Retrospective Evaluation was performed to provide information on the costs and benefits of WAP services in different parts of the country and for different types of housing. It was also performed to provide a comprehensive picture of the Program (including the characteristics of the clients, housing stock, and service providers) and assess program administration.

This study examined consumer awareness and opinions concerning the New Jersey Clean Energy Program (NJCEP). Research areas included New Jersey homeowners' awareness of NJCEP, an assessment of attitudes towards energy efficiency, the main benefits associated with energy efficiency, key drivers associated with purchasing energy efficient products, the best methods for increasing consumers awareness of NJCEP, and obstacles to implementing energy efficiency measures in the home.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on introducing Better Buildings Residential Network members to each other.

This page contains annual and monthly update reports of the Green Jobs-Green New York program.

The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the potential for HEMS as an evolving avenue to deeper residential energy savings, and it explains, in detail, the variations and characteristics of HEMS; what the market is and who the major market players are; what the major barriers to implementation look like; and finally, it attempts to outline potential program solutions with HEMS at the core of the strategy.

Home Performance (HP) XML is transforming the way home energy upgrade programs collect and transfer information from one software system to another, leading to improved contractor satisfaction, lower administrative costs, and technological advancements in the home performance industry. This presentation provides an overview of HPXML and its benefits, and discuss how the data standard is facilitating technological and process improvements among home energy upgrade programs and software developers in the United States.